Today, BP put its Chairman in front of the cameras, a man who doesn’t speak English as a first language, and it showed:
On Wednesday, BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg told reporters in Washington: “I hear comments sometimes that large oil companies are greedy companies or don’t care, but that is not the case with BP. We care about the small people.” He later said he was very sorry for speaking “clumsily.”
Why did they put this guy out front? What are they thinking? Between the words of their executives and the reports of what’s happening with the cleanup itself, I can’t come up with one PR-related thing they’ve done right in this whole mess.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: BP does not care what consumers and the American public thinks. They only care what politicians do, because politicians are the only ones who can affect, regulate, or punish BP’s business.
In the meantime, sit back and watch the worst reputation management you may ever see. If it wasn’t such a tragedy, it’d be comical.
